What the Chief Inspector Saw: The Harry Field Case
by noenigma
Summary: A story looking back on Who Killed Harry Field?
1. Chapter 1

A story looking back on _Who Killed Harry Field?_

I thought it would be fun to try a different viewpoint for this one...it turned out to be a lot harder than I expected to fill in the thoughts behind Morse's actions and words. I might have scrapped the whole idea if not for that wonderful "I'm sorry to tell you, Lewis…" moment that I've itched to get my hands on for years now. I hope I've done it justice.

Disclaimer: This is solely for fan purposes. No copyright infringement intended.

**What the Chief Inspector Saw: The Harry Field Case**

_Based on Who Killed Harry Field_ by Geoffrey Case.

Chapter One

After the preceding grey, rainy days and long, restless nights, Chief Inspector Morse's thoughts were bleak and downhearted; he was far from viewing this new case as an exciting puzzle waiting to be solved. The day had dawned bright and clear, but the body lying in the middle of the shady woods ruined whatever enjoyment he might have eked out of being out of doors in a beautiful and rustic setting.

To make matters worse, his sergeant was nowhere to be seen. Had been nowhere to be seen all weekend. Off on some frivolous family holiday spent in Yorkshire of all places. If a man must seek time away from his useful and usual place, surely he should make off to somewhere…well, somewhere that would nourish his soul, feed his spirit—Verona, perhaps, or Rome. But Yorkshire? His sergeant had deserted him for Yorkshire. What could there possibly be in Yorkshire that warranted Lewis leaving him to the luck of the draw and the mercies of the duty sergeant? If there had been a case over the long, unending weekend he'd just survived who knew what green, uncouth, and untrained sergeant or, God forbid, constable he would have been stuck with while Lewis ran around shooting blurry snaps of green dales and wooly sheep? And, knowing Lewis, the odd pig.

Morse sniffed unhappily and, in spite of himself, leaned down to examine the dead man's hands. A nice, satisfying murder to solve was often just the ticket for Morse; but that didn't mean he wanted to have to examine the body at its core. Nothing like. This one (fiftyish male, long and lean, longish hair) wasn't the worst he'd ever had to see. No visible wounds or blood. But, still, very much dead. A body robbed of its life. A vivid reminder that death came for all. A sight he had no wish to dwell on, but as his sergeant wasn't about to note the details, one he was forced to, like it or not. One with something dirty under—

"Good morning, Sir," Lewis' familiar voice said from above him. Morse looked up to see his sergeant looking down from the old, stone bridge sheltering the body.

"Relaxing weekend, Lewis?" the chief inspector queried. Not that he much cared if Lewis had enjoyed his weekend; not knowing how his sergeant's desertion had ruined his own.

It took Lewis a moment to answer a surprised and somewhat tentative, "Yes, thanks, Sir."

That only figured. There had been Lewis and the family enjoying themselves in the dales, while Morse had been stuck in rainy Oxford dreading a call out without a reliable sergeant to back him up. There probably hadn't even been a drop of rain or a cloud in the sky to darken their weekend. "Just as well," Morse murmured, turning back to the dead man and his dirty fingernails.

For some reason that at first mystified Morse, Lewis' first words to him when he'd made his way down the roughhewn stairs from up above was to ask, "Tired, Sir?" Ah, but, then, Lewis had been up above with Constable…oh, with the constable who'd spoken even poorer grammar than his sergeant and who had drawn Morse's reprimand on another matter or two as well in the short time since the chief inspector's arrival on scene. The man had doubtlessly complained to Lewis about his perceived ill-treatment. His sort always did.

"Yes," Morse said quietly. "I am tired."

"And why's that?" Lewis asked as though he'd never had a sleepless night or two himself. And quite possibly the man hadn't…not the sort Morse himself had endured at any rate. Lewis was fond of saying he slept like a log; sleepless nights on his part had more to do with colicky babies or self-imposed overtime than restless hours of tossing and turning or sitting and brooding.

"Lack of sleep," Morse answered shortly. Insinuate as much as he liked, the sergeant was wrong in assuming Morse was simply in a foul mood from lack of sleep and hence the complaints from Constable…what's his name.

"Have you tried pills?" Lewis asked like a man who truly did sleep like a log and had never been forced to explore the deplorable aids for sleep out there for those who spent their nights tossing and turning.

"No." Morse said. It was high time his sergeant got to work. He pointed vaguely toward the body while avoiding having to have another look himself. "There's a lot of um...earth or something under his fingernails..."

Lewis, who as always wasn't bothered by getting close and personal with a corpse, leaned over the dead man with interest. "A farmer or gardener?" he mused before noting, "Big strong hands." Morse wondered what his sergeant thought the relevance of their murder victim's hand size had to do with his having been murdered. Really. He'd spent the weekend dreading a call without Lewis at his side for this?

Morse had had enough. As he headed back to his car, he informed Lewis, "No identification. Fourteen pounds in his pocket...it's almost as if he just popped out for a minute."

"Yeah," Lewis said, "in the middle of nowhere."

"Quite." Climbing the stairs back up to the road, Morse continued filling Lewis in, "He's been dead for a few days."

"Well, he certainly hadn't 'popped' here on Friday," Lewis noted. "There was a woman here walking her dog right past." Well, then, the constable must have dug her up between his report to Morse himself and the arrival of his AWOL sergeant.

"And," Morse said, "he certainly wasn't here on Saturday or Sunday."

"How do you know?" Lewis asked as though Morse were a psychic.

"If you hadn't been to sunny Yorkshire for the weekend, you'd know," Morse said pointedly. "It poured with rain here. The body is dry. It's been kept somewhere."

By then, they'd topped the slope and headed towards Morse's Jag parked along the edge of the bridge. A red X marking the spot above the crumpled body of their murder victim.

"I was wondering, Sir, any chance of a chat at some point?" Lewis asked him.

Still disgruntled at the thought of his wet and gloomy weekend while Lewis had been gallivanting in the sun, Morse had to ask, "Who with?"

"Um…you and me," his sergeant said, and there was something hesitant in his voice that made Morse narrow his eyes.

"I suppose so," Morse allowed before asking, "What about?"

He hadn't quite demanded an answer but come close to it, nevertheless his sergeant failed to satisfy him with a useful reply. Instead he fumbled out, "Oh, well, when we've got a bit more time." Morse frowned over the car at Lewis, but Lewis climbed in as though he didn't notice.

And what was that all about? The chief inspector wasn't sure he wanted to know. It had poured all weekend in Oxford, a not infrequent happening. His sergeant was the capable sort. Trustworthy, loyal, hardworking. They could use men like him all over the country. Even in sunny Yorkshire…but, no. Lewis' chat was bound to be something else…the constable's complaints perhaps. Though Lewis had never seemed to have any particular trouble in dealing with such things among the junior officers before. Still, something of no more import than that would be the topic of their little chat. Surely.


	2. Chapter 2

They'd hardly made it back to the station before they were given the plastic evidence bag with the things found in the dead man's pockets: fourteen pounds and a few odd shillings, a watch, fountain pen, and a key ring with its small collection of keys.

Lewis grabbed up the keys and looked curiously at the key ring. "This looks like a logo for something."

It only took Morse one look to know where the ring had come from. "A garage. CT Autos," he pronounced.

"How do you know?" Lewis asked. Another good thing about his sergeant. He was always asking questions, always looking for answers, and always wanting to know that little bit extra. Any other man would have asked more about the garage; Lewis asked how Morse had known. He'd follow that question up with the ones about CT Motors, but only after he'd discovered how Morse had come by his knowledge. Lewis had a drive to know how to _think_, how to _know_, and Morse planned to use that drive to make a detective out of his sergeant before he was done with him.

Still, not every question received a noteworthy answer. Morse knew the logo was that of CT Motors in much the same way he knew their body hadn't lain on the ground over the weekend. He'd been there. Sometimes that was the only way of knowing. Unfortunately, being law-abiding men themselves, it wasn't a very helpful way of knowing about the commission of a murder. "They service my car," he explained.

It was on the way to his car that Morse gave a thought to what he knew of CT Motors and its proprietor, and it was that thought which made him turn to Lewis and say, "When we get there I'd like you to conduct the interview, Lewis."

"Right," Lewis agreed easily enough. But, it was only the briefest instant before he asked the inevitable, "Why, exactly?" Morse thought it best to let the sergeant learn that bit of information on his own.

"Why, aye, it reckons to be one of our key rings," the proprietor of CT Motors confirmed—or at least Morse thought that was what the man was saying. It was virtually impossible to tell; his northern accent was thicker than fog on the Thames. "But, that doesn't mean it's one of our customers, does it? I mean that stands to reason, doesn't it?"

Even Lewis seemed to not be sure what 'does it' or 'doesn't it' he was supposed to be responding to as he muttered in response, "Well...yeah… That's right."

"Mind you, I can't really be certain about that," the man was off again. "Now, can I?"

"No. Right. Hang on a minute," Lewis told the man, doubtlessly afraid he'd be overrun by the next spat of twisted vowels and words. He called over to Morse, "It may not be a customer here, Sir. They give a lot out as gifts."

Morse, who'd made sure he was at least a car removed from Lewis' interview, called back over to his sergeant, "If it were a customer, how would we find out which one? Ask him."

The garage man sputtered in outrage, "I heard you meself, you cantankerous old bugger!" As an aside to Lewis he said, "I know that one. It'd be a different kind of story if he wanted his car servicing in a hurry. "

"Never mind him at the moment. He's not sleeping too well," Lewis sidestepped the complaint easily. "Listen, if it was a customer..."

"Looking at that, I'd say that that could be a bike key," the man said holding up a small key triumphantly.

And that was the lead they needed. It wasn't long before Lewis had tracked down the right motorcycle with his usual efficiency and was on the phone saying, "Sir, I've found him. He owned a Vincent Black Shadow. His name is Harry Field." Identifying their victim was something to get excited about, but Morse wasn't feeling like celebrating. Not after what he'd just happened to notice on his sergeant's desk.

PACE. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Its presence tucked into Lewis' desk blotter could only mean one thing. Morse hadn't been eager for a chat with Lewis before he'd made his discovery and was even less so after. Promotion. His sergeant was looking for promotion. It wasn't that Morse hadn't known the day would come when Sergeant Lewis would transform into Inspector Lewis. Lewis was too good a man to not one day make inspector. But, now? Lewis still had so much to learn, and Morse still had far too much to teach him. It would be a waste. A terrible waste of not only a good man but of the burgeoning detective Morse had been nurturing in his sergeant.

And…it would be a great loss to Morse himself. He'd always considered himself an independent sort. He'd been disappointed too often by his fellow men and fellow officers to be otherwise—right up until Lewis had barged his way into his life five years before and proven to be utterly trustworthy and loyal. Oh, Lewis could be terribly obtuse, and once he got an idea into his head he could be far too single-minded for his or the case's own good, but...the past weekend without his sergeant had been rough enough. Morse wasn't sure he knew how to get along without Lewis by his side anymore or even if he could. And he didn't relish the trying.

It was a situation that would have to be faced, but the chief inspector wasn't up to it. And they had a job to do.

"After I finally found the right worksheet everyone remembered him perfectly," Lewis told him as they pulled up at the address the garage had on file for Harry Field. "I'm surprised you didn't know him, Sir. They reckon he was a bit of a character," the sergeant added, perhaps in an attempt to draw Morse out of the pensive quietness he'd fallen into on the trip there. Morse ignored the jibe.

Lewis ran off to question a man up a ladder the next let over while Morse went on alone into Harry Field's portion of the converted, old brick building. It was an art studio not a residence. Art works, some worse than others, were everywhere along with all the paraphernalia of the trade. The oil on one of the paintings was not quite dry even days after the artist was dead. Someone had ripped a hole right through the center of a painting of a woman's face…an accident perhaps. But there was no doubt someone had taken a dislike to one of the other canvases; acid had been thrown on it and left to do its corrosive best. The painting seemed to have been nothing but the beginnings of a rather uninteresting landscape; certainly there were far more provocative works lying about. Perhaps the acid wasn't for the art but the artist.

Wandering in, Lewis reported, "Neighbor. Knew Mr. Field by sight. Hadn't seen much of him. He mentioned hearing a car in the small hours, one morning last week. A high-performance car, he thought."

Morse listened with only half an ear. He held up a snap he'd untacked from the wall and said, "Here's our man when he was very much alive." As Lewis began to walk over for a look, Morse warned him, "Don't step there, that's acid. Someone threw it at this painting."

"I wonder who did that," Lewis said with far less curiosity than sarcasm in his voice.

"Whoever did it had a key. No break-in," Morse said, once again moving listlessly around the studio. He paused at their victim's jacket and said quietly, "His jacket. He doubtless expected to be wearing it again. His paints….here we are again, Lewis. Putting together the last moments of a complete stranger's life. Showing more concern for him now than we would when he was alive."

These were not thoughts he normally voiced to his sergeant though they were ones that he reflected on quite frequently. So much of their jobs involved delving into the lives of people who could no longer speak up for themselves. What might Harry Fields have said if they'd arrived to poke around his studio when he'd yet been alive? By the looks of that photo, he would have had a lot to say and not once would it have been, "Pardon the mess." No. Morse had a feeling that Harry had lived his life without excuses.

"He wasn't our problem then, was he?" Lewis asked, refusing to join Morse in his maudlin thoughts. No getting too philosophical with Lewis about.

Morse came at last to the answering machine. He used his pen to rewind the tape in order to hear the messages Harry Fields had never gotten the chance to hear. Several hang-ups; the older man who could have hardly been more circumspect about whom and what he was speaking if he'd known it would be two strangers listening instead of dear, old Harry; the woman growing progressively angrier with each call until her voice was loud and shrill as she demanded, "Where are you? What do I have to do, eh? Call the police to find you?"

The chief inspector found that message unbearably heartbreaking. "I'm afraid the police have found him," he said into the quiet following her words.


	3. Chapter 3

There followed the sad trek out to Keating's Way to meet the grieving widow, and for all her angry bluster on the answering machine, Mrs. Field was indeed a grieving widow. Pale and trembling, full of regrets and gin, and still more than a bit angry. From the garish, red lips painted around the number plate on the door; the clashing throws covering the rather scruffy furniture; and several more paintings by Harry Field, none of them any better than those Morse had already seen at the studio, to the vulnerability and fragileness of Mrs. Field, it was an uncomfortable and depressing interview.

"All I could do was curse him for not being home as he'd said," she concluded. "How bloody suburban!" To Harry Fields, and to his wife, ('_very Sixties even at fifty'_) suburban was the ultimate curse. Banal, ordinary…not Harry on his Black Shadow motorbike, and not his lovely wife. At least not in Harry's mind…yet there was nothing new, nothing original, or interesting in Harry's paintings. Poor copies of other men's works, that's all they'd been as far as could be seen stacked in the studio or hung on the walls of the Field home. Poor Harry. No wonder he'd needed to go off sometimes and drink himself blind to the banality that was his life's work.

Morse's mind was fast at work on the puzzle of all those hang-ups as they left Mrs. Field to her sorrow and regrets.

"Why would someone keep telephoning Harry's studio and yet steadfastly refuse to leave a message?"

Lewis, mercifully throwing out an answer instead of an unsatisfactory 'I don't know', said, "It could have been his dad from Spain having difficulty getting through?"

Morse dismissed that easily. "If I'd tried to get through five times, I'd have mentioned it. And I'd have been annoyed. He sounded quite relaxed. Whoever kept ringing needed to speak to Harry urgently. Someone who would only speak to him personally."

"Of course, it might have been someone wanting to make sure he wasn't there," Lewis offered.

"The jar of acid, yes. I was wondering about that," Morse agreed. Whoever had thrown the acid might have wanted to make a statement without having to face Harry himself. There'd been a lot of anger and malice behind that throw, but enough to end in murder?

Back at the station, Morse was amused to discover Harry Field had had an interesting sideline. He was chuckling over the coats of arms Harry had devised for his customers when Lewis walked into the office.

"Are you ok, Sir?" the sergeant asked.

Morse chose to ignore the fact that Lewis' question implied he found the sight of Morse enjoying himself unusual and cause for concern. He said instead, "I think I might have got on with Harry Field. I used to idle my hours away doing this sort of thing when I was a student." He laughed outright as he read one of the Latin captions. It was all lost on Lewis who was more interested in the report he'd brought in with him. Morse, ever ready to educate his sergeant, helpfully translated the Latin.

Missing the joke entirely, Lewis asked, "He'd got it wrong, had he, Sir?"

"No. No, Lewis. He was making it up. Joke genealogy," Morse explained, or tried to anyway. Lewis merely looked at Morse as though he questioned his sanity. Morse went on, "Heraldry. It seems Harry had a sideline." He went back to reading and laughing over Harry's work, and Lewis went back to his report.

As Morse's merriment continued, Lewis frowned and said, "It's the way you tell them, Sir." Enjoying the jokes too much to care, Morse let that pass. After another round of what to him was apparently incomprehensible chuckling, Lewis said, "He was a lad, wasn't he?"

"Well," Morse said, "he certainly enjoyed a joke."

"But he didn't like wearing a crash helmet," Lewis informed him, and finally Morse turned his mind from the heraldry to the case. Harry's body had appeared in the middle of nowhere with no hint of how it had come to be there, but if Harry was wont to roar about on his Vincent Black Shadow helmetless—time for another visit with the widow.

"I don't usually drink at lunch time. Well, I don't drink much at all. Weak head. I don't like pubs," Mrs. Field's assured him. As she'd invited him out to the pub over her lunch hour and was even then leading him toward the door, Morse had nothing to say in reply. Instead, he held out a folded piece of paper invoicing Harry's sideline.

"We...um, we found this at the studio," he told her somewhat apologetically. Morse was not a man to examine his own motives and behaviours too closely. Not unless the days were long, the nights longer, the whisky low in the bottle, and his mood even lower. Those were times of discontent, sorrow, and deep regrets; best to not be too contemplative. Even so, he was well aware that he had a soft spot when it came to the fairer sex. Some of them anyway; Helen Field, vulnerable yet strong even through her loss, certainly qualified. Even so, regret disturbing her further all he might, there were questions that had to be asked, answers that had to be demanded.

She was in turns apologetic, defensive, and defiant as she explained the genealogies. "We were broke. As needs must. Well, what do they expect for thirty pounds plus postage and packing? We didn't make anything out of it—well, nothing to speak of. Most of the money was exchanged for claret. It was Harry's idea. He said it was what everyone wanted deep down...feeling they had a history. He gave them one, even if in translation it meant sup up and have another."

"Did he sell much of his own work?"

"No. Cleaning. Restoration. Fag-end work, he called it."

"He minded about that?"

"Of course he minded. He trained to be a painter." Instead he'd been reduced to cleaning and the like while his own paintings stacked up along the walls of his studio. Morse had no doubt that Harry of the Black Shadow and clever Latin twists had minded very much.

"Who modeled for him?" he asked once they were seated and had their drinks before them. It was a question he asked more to satisfy his sergeant's curiosity than his own. Lewis had a bee in his bonnet over the woman who appeared in so many of Harry's paintings. Morse wasn't convinced who the woman was had any relevance to their case, but from experience, he knew Lewis wouldn't let it go until he'd worked it to death.

"No one. He couldn't afford anyone," Helen told him. Morse thought, not for the first time, that she knew a lot more than she was willing to tell him. But, in this case…she seemed to believe what she was saying. If there had been a living, breathing woman behind the face in all those paintings stacked in Harry's studio, it was possible his wife had been none the wiser. And there was still the real reason behind this meeting to address. The crash helmet left at the studio, the missing motorcycle, and the body dumped in the middle of nowhere.

"He could have ridden there, but we haven't found the bike. Do you have any idea where he might have been going? Or who he might have been meeting?" But, no, she hadn't on either account. "When did you visit the studio last?"

"We went to pick up some wine for the party. Saturday night."

"He kept it all the way out there, did he?"

"Well, he drank it," she told him in a tone that clearly expressed her dislike of him questioning her words. She wasn't the first, nor would she be the last. Part and parcel of being a detective. Morse rarely let it distress him.

"He didn't happen to check his answering machine, did he?"

"There were no messages," she said with a certainty that surprised him until she told him the sad truth. "Harry looked at the machine and said, 'There you see? Nobody loves me."

Morse waited quietly while she swallowed down a wave of tears, and then pressed forward with the interview, "I received a forensic report this morning...it—uh, well, it contradicts some of the information you gave me. The telephone call you say you received from Harry Thursday evening—"

"Say I received? I wish I hadn't wiped the tape!" She'd wanted no details of her husband's death, but he'd spent her lunch hour giving her unwanted details. He was sorry for that, but the worse was still to come.

"So do I. According to my forensic report, Harry had been dead four days by then." She stared at him in mute horror and then gulped down a large amount of drink for a woman who claimed she didn't drink much at all, but when she finally found her voice, she adamantly stuck to her account of the phone call left on her answerphone Thursday evening.


	4. Chapter 4

So back to the studio.

"How does a dead man telephone his wife?" Morse held up the small tape from Harry's machine and answered his own question, "A tape recording."

"Made by who?" Lewis asked. Morse chose to let the who/whom lesson go for the evening. It seemed to be a hopeless cause at any rate.

"A person, or persons, unknown."

"But how?"

"I was rather hoping you'd have a few ideas," Morse said. He hadn't really expected Lewis to catch his point and felt it was probably just as well he hadn't.

"Well, one springs to mind. Mrs. Field never got a call from him."

"Why should she lie about it?"

"I don't know yet," Lewis answered. "But Forensics has got no reason to lie to us, have they?"

"I wouldn't have thought so." Morse was quiet for the next few minutes. Why indeed? Yet, he was quite sure the fair widow had been truthful on that point. "Do you know what I always do after I've had my car serviced, Lewis?" he asked.

Lewis had that look about him when he answered, "Probably go for a drink."

"I do," Morse said choosing to ignore Lewis small smirk. He got more than enough censure about his alcoholic intake from Strange and his doctor. He certainly didn't need it from his sergeant as well. "I go for a run in it, and I stop for a drink. It's a very satisfying, pleasurable thing to do. And didn't the perceptive Gordon at the garage say that Harry was unusually sober when he picked up his motorcycle? He'd have wanted a drink. He would also have wanted to try out his motorcycle. He didn't wear a crash helmet which meant that he went out after dark."

He interrupted himself to ponder the line written in Latin on the back of the acid-splashed canvas. "The wood of the cross is the tree of knowledge," he translated and then mused, "Not terribly funny, is it?" Lewis murmured his agreement, but Morse had already gone back to his earlier thoughts. "I'd say Harry went to a pub."

Morse was spot on as it turned out. Harry's motorbike was found at a pub far enough out of town that he could have enjoyed his ride in peace yet not too far in case he would have had to wobble home just as Morse had predicted. The inspector was rather pleasantly surprised to find it was still there after so long of a time. A tribute to country living he had first assumed. Only belatedly did he realize such was not the case.

Discouraged with the wicked, pettiness of human nature wherever it was found, Morse left Lewis to be civil and make nice to the man while he wandered away. A storm was brewing. Here on the edge of civilization brown fields waved beneath the swirling grey clouds in a spectacle Morse would usually be too busy and preoccupied to appreciate. The world was a wild and beautiful place but unforgiving. Demanding. Heedless of the lives of men, their virtues, or their faults. All that striving and wanting. And for what?

Lewis finished his interview and strolled out to join him. Morse pulled himself away from his contemplations and scoffed, "Was going to report it."

"Ah, he had his eye on it for himself...three months unclaimed, and then have it for his own."

"Harry certainly didn't leave that bike by choice. Something happened here." For a moment there was only the sound of the wind rustling the grass and whipping at their clothes as the storm brewed. It left Morse feeling discontent and unable to turn his mind to the case. Or perhaps it wasn't the storm at all, but that booklet slipped into Lewis' desk blotter and the impending dark days it foreshadowed. Lewis's bid for promotion was a very dark cloud looming over him threatening to wreak havoc on his life and leave it as desolate as the brown fields stretching before them. And in the meantime, it was there between them spoiling the comfortable camaraderie they usually shared which made working with Lewis both rewarding and productive. And without which Morse couldn't seem to _think_.

It simply wouldn't do to go on leaving it unspoken and unaddressed no matter how much Morse might wish it had never come up. "Could he keep it as unclaimed lost property?" he asked.

"Don't insurance companies stop looking after three months?"

"But, surely, it would still be theft. What does PACE say about it?" Morse asked and couldn't help feeling a small bit of satisfaction watching his words catch Lewis totally unprepared. Petty of him, but there it was. One of his downfalls surely that even while grieving Lewis' imminent departure he could crow over putting one over on the man.

Looking like a guilty, little boy, Lewis fumbled out, "PACE, Sir?"

"The Police and Criminal Evidence Act—it's on your desk. When a CID sergeant starts reading that particular publication, it can mean one of two things: he hasn't got enough work to do, or his wife wants him to be an inspector."

"Time for that chat, Sir?"

The threatening storm blew over but that didn't lessen the gloom settling down on the two of them as Lewis tried to explain about that PACE on his desk.

"Look, Sir, I don't want you to think for a minute, that I'm unhappy with my work."

"No, no," Morse assured him, "I hadn't thought that."

"And I didn't want to talk about it until we'd had a chance for a natter, you know. I mean, I really would value your opinion."

Morse had been determined to hear the man out without being judgmental. Lewis deserved that from him surely. But…if the sergeant really wanted his opinion, he'd give it to him. Morse didn't try to hide is disdain as he clarified, "About being sent back into uniform?"

Lewis tried to defuse his words, "I don't think it's thought of like that anymore, actually. I want to get on, Sir. I mean, obviously, there's the money side of things, as well. What with the kids growing up. They're spending a fortune every time you turn round. Inflation going up all the time. Well, you know." Morse couldn't argue with any of that, or even speak to it. His salary was more than sufficient for his needs, but a family on a sergeant's wages? Who was he to tell Mrs. Lewis she was spending too much at the shops or the Lewis children last year's school clothes were more than serviceable? No. He couldn't argue with it, but that didn't mean he liked it. Not one bit. Lewis went on, "And I want a bit of responsibility."

Now that was a laugh. "In the Traffic Division? Are there enough patrolmen on the bypass? Is the one-way system working well enough on market days? It's a challenge."

Lewis shook his head and said more to himself than Morse for Morse wasn't ready to listen, "Aye. I was expecting something like this."

"Through flow of vehicles. That sort of thing." He'd spent the majority of their chat avoiding Lewis' face, but he looked directly at him as he asked, "Is that what you want to do?" He didn't try to keep the disbelief from his voice. He'd taken Lewis on as his sergeant because he'd believed Lewis had the drive to be more than just a plodding detective. The man would be miserable relegated back to Traffic. Lewis needed to face it before he made the change and discovered it the hard way. Lewis' answer was a grimace and a shrug for surely he knew that answer as well as Morse did. Morse had a brief glimmer of hope that he'd gotten through and they could drink up and get on with their jobs.

But, whether it was what Lewis wanted or not, it was what he'd determined to do. "I might not pass the exam," he said, pushing on. "Even if I did, it could be months before there's a promotion vacancy. The thing is, Sir, I have to have your recommendation…what I need to know is—do you think I'm good enough? To be recommended for promotion?" Morse heard the questioning, almost pleading tone in Lewis' voice, but he kept his eyes turned away and didn't see the stark need for approval in his sergeant's face.

Morse was a man who drew his satisfaction not from the regard of others but from his own sense of self-worth. Anyone who didn't think as highly of his abilities as Morse did himself was someone whose opinion Morse easily dismissed as unimportant and ignorant. That others, his sergeant in particular, were cut from a different cloth didn't occur to Morse. The blind eye he turned to Lewis' plea was thoughtlessly insensitive; not purposely cruel.

"I'm sorry to tell you, Lewis…" he began reluctantly, pronouncing the words slowly and with a great deal of weight because what he had to say was difficult and would change everything between them, "…that the answer to that is yes."

Morse was mystified with Lewis' subdued 'thank you, Sir' to his endorsement. Perhaps he had managed to give the sergeant pause to think after all for Lewis appeared more disheartened than relieved to receive his recommendation. Maybe Lewis had asked only to satisfy Mrs. Lewis and had counted on Morse's refusal?

Or maybe that was only what Morse had wanted to see for Lewis seemed happy enough sharing the news with Mrs. Lewis when she picked him up at the station later that day. As Morse watched from the window, the smiles on their faces did nothing to lighten his mood. He was losing Lewis. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon.

With that sad knowledge dogging him, he'd gone off to Harry's wake. Too much booze even for Morse. Too much ugly backbiting. Health, wealth, and happiness, Harry's catchphrase, absent in spades. There'd been Lewis showing up with a quiet but pointed 'I brought my car' and an 'Anything useful?' reminder that he wasn't there (or shouldn't have been there) to drown his own troubles. Before Morse had the chance to find out why Lewis was there when he'd headed off home for the evening earlier, there was the video of Harry's last birthday celebration with its less than charitable mocking of Tony Doyle, the man Morse was beginning to suspect was Mrs. Field's lover. Lewis, who spent most of the evening outside thanking God such scenes were far from his own life and probably studying PACE in the dim moonlight, still managed to arrive at that same conclusion.


	5. Chapter 5

So the night was not totally wasted. Not only the Tony Doyle angle to look into but also the possibility of forgery.

The morning found Morse tired, suffering from the aftereffects of Harry's wake, and visiting Ian Matthews, an art professor friend of Morse's who laughed outright at the thought Harry's work could pass as a Whistler. Which put paid to the idea of forgery. Lewis' morning's work proved more fruitful. Doyle had been found to be an interesting and possible suspect who owned the sort of car that the neighbor had heard peeling away from Harry's studio the night he had quite possibly died.

Morse left Lewis to his work and went off to visit Freddie, Harry's friend the wine dealer. The poor man had had the word from his doctor and was off the booze. Left with only Lewis' preferred drink, orange juice, Freddie was suffering badly. They toasted Harry with the dead man's favorite expensive plonk (_a Rolls-Royce taste on a Mini income _was Freddie's summation, and as he'd been the one tallying the bill he should know). Freddie licked his lips and swallowed involuntarily and begged Morse for a detailed, sip-by-sip description of the drink in an obviously ineffective way of vicariously tasting what he could no longer enjoy himself.

In exchange, Freddie gave Morse what information he could about his old friend. First, unlike most of the people at Harry's wake, Freddie was actually grieving for Harry. Morse had instinctively liked Harry from his first perusal of the man's studio so that bit of information was welcome even though it had no bearing on the case whatsoever. But there'd been more. Things which might just prove relevant. Like the fact Harry hated painting landscapes; if he'd had one in the works it was almost certainly commissioned. Or though Harry had always seemed able to 'pull something out of the hat', he was always sailing close to the wind financially. What's more, Freddie and Harry had traveled together to Cahors for the wine festival; Harry, who hated to paint landscapes, had stayed on there after the wine festival had ended to paint. Ten days or so, painting whom then if landscapes weren't in the picture?

Leaving Freddie to hanker after his wines in peace, Morse returned to Harry's studio. There was nothing there he hadn't seen time and time again. No landscapes of French vineyards or villas…nothing even remotely like. No one in the paintings besides the model reputed to not exist though unbeknownst to Morse Lewis was even then tracking about Oxford searching for her; Helen; and a winking Harry enjoying a very fine joke.

And there was the Latin inscription that was so far removed from the humorous ones Harry had coined elsewhere. Musing what it could mean, Morse glanced over at Harry's self-portrait and quietly said, "Hello, Harry. I got your note." For there was something there. Some clue refusing to come into focus in those incongruous words.

He'd been off to London bright and early the next morning to traipse around the College of Arms seeking answers for nebulous questions that had robbed him of his much needed sleep. Arriving back home, he'd called and arranged to meet Lewis at the Crooked Chimney…he'd needed a drink after his visit to the wicked metropolis.

Lewis greeted him with, "You didn't tell me you were going to London."

Considering Lewis was making plans to desert him permanently, Morse's answer was a brusque, "We're not joined at the hip, Lewis!" Before his sergeant could react, Morse called the words back. "Sorry. It was just the thought…I couldn't sleep." Lewis headed off towards the bar, but his boss had other ideas. Morse had enjoyed his pint waiting for Lewis to show, and being Morse he failed to consider that he'd called his sergeant away from his lunch and the man just might want something himself. He stood and strode off down the pavement saying as he did so, "I've got something to show you, Lewis." Lewis dutifully put his money back in his pocket and caught him up.

Morse was in no hurry to explain himself to Lewis. What he'd discovered would have more impact when they'd arrived at their destination. As usual, that wasn't a problem with Lewis. The sergeant needed very little encouragement to fill the country silence with his chatter.

"I almost turned into a detective today," he reported. "I had an idea about the girl in the paintings. I recognized the tower in one of them—the one where she's being lifted into the air? I thought maybe one of the houses in the painting was where she lived. When I got there the place was nothing like the picture."

"Painters have an annoying habit of painting what they see, rather than what's actually there, I'm afraid," Morse commented.

Lewis nodded and went on, "Doyle reckoned Harry had copied her out of a magazine."

"It's odd he should paint her so often."

"I thought that," Lewis agreed. "Almost obsessively, you could say."

The art studio walls being lined with stacks of paintings featuring the mystery woman, Morse couldn't deny it. But it wasn't why he was traipsing Lewis through the green fields of pastoral England. "He once told his wife he was a forger. I'm reliably informed he didn't have the skill. But he was up to something. I went to the College of Arms in London. _Lignum crucis arbor scientiae._ I thought it was a little ponderous to be one of Harry's own. I spoke to a man known as the Blue Mantle Pursuivant."

As Morse had expected Lewis was as amused with such a title as Morse was himself. "Really," he assured his sergeant. "He's a herald. The motto was taken by the Fitzwilliam family of Oxford in 1437. Harry was just beginning a painting of their home. Now the Fitzwilliams are long gone, but oddly enough the present owner is a customer of CT Autos. Paul Eugene Eirl." Morse had his timing perfect; the huge, brick home came into view as he said, "And three hundred yards from where Harry's motorcycle was found…is the back of the estate." The two of them stood there in silence as the sergeant took in this very interesting development. Coincidences might happen, but not this many, not in the middle of a murder investigation.

"Time we paid Mr. Eirl a visit, Lewis."

Like most arrogant men, or perhaps all, Morse found vanity in others reprehensible. The antipathy he quickly developed for Paul Eugene Eirl was natural, instinctive, and absolute. Eirl's ill-mannered flaunting of his wealth and importance was superfluous. His intellectual and cultural haughtiness (t_he last time someone in my family commissioned a painting of a house,_ t_he painter was Cezanne. You know Cezanne?) _gross overkill. And his thinking that his staff was much too busy to be bothered by the likes of Morse…well, Morse commended himself on his self-restraint. He felt quite virtuous when Eirl couldn't work up even a modicum of compassion for a dead man but sparkled with interest at the mention of the classic motorcycle.

Lewis had finished up his part of the day's investigations and was back at the station waiting for Morse. Studying his accursed PACE. Coming in, Morse ignored his sergeant's hurried attempt to conceal it from him. Having just spent far too long learning far too little from Eirl, Morse wasn't willing to beat his head against that wall at the moment. Lewis quickly filled him on the little he had learned: Eirl and Harry may have both used CT Autos on occasion but neither had introduced the other to them—no joy there; and Mr. Eirl had been in London the day of Harry's alleged call home. Nothing the uncooperative Frenchman hadn't already given Morse.

Morse shook his head and mused, "Why Eirl's house? The paintings...I don't..."

"Well, he could have just copied it from a magazine, like he did the girl," Lewis suggested.

"The house exists, Lewis! The girl doesn't," Morse said emphatically.

Lewis looked anything but convinced. "I don't know, Sir…I just—might be I could spare a bit more time looking for her? Can't hurt, surely?"

Morse rolled his eyes, but as he could come up with no other avenue of enquiry for Lewis to pursue at the moment he let him go. There was something he needed to discuss with Chief Superintendent Strange anyway.


	6. Chapter 6

He'd hoped Strange could assure a place for Lewis still in the division if the sergeant should happen to pass his examination and earn his promotion, but Morse came away from his meeting with the chief superintendent without getting what he had wanted. Worse there'd been the utterly ridiculous insinuations that it was Morse himself who was sending Lewis off to Traffic.

Strange seemed to think it was unlikely Lewis would want to stay even if he could. "Let's face it, Morse, he doesn't get much change out of you, does he? I'm amazed he's stayed so long, the way you talk to him."

"What? How do I talk to him?" Morse had demanded. He and Strange had never understood each other particularly well—_Strange by name, strange by nature _was apt enough when it came to the chief superintendent. Morse truly could not believe what the man was insinuating. And the look Strange gave him…as though it was clear enough how Morse talked to his sergeant!

Strange sighed as though he'd rather not have to make his meaning clear, but he went on anyway, "Well…in your way, I suppose. Dismissively."

"Nonsense," Morse said automatically. Strange made a small 'there you go' sort of sound and Morse thought that was hardly fair. If a man was wont to speak drivel he couldn't expect an intelligent man to applaud him. That 'nonsense', dismissive as it was in this particular case, proved nothing as far as his behaviour towards Lewis. Strange didn't know what he was on about.

Not that that stopped him for continuing, "You've had a very good officer there Morse. There aren't too many like Lewis. You'll miss him." Finally, something that both made sense and was the truth. Unfortunately, it was no help; only hammering in what Morse had already known.

The only thing he'd gotten from the meeting was a lift to the College. Strange had been off to the Chancellor's big do; Morse, thankfully, only to visit once more with his art professor friend who'd been much more accommodating then Strange. Not only generous with the whisky but also with some very helpful information. Eirl was causing a lot of gowns to be washed and ironed with an offer of two million pounds for a new University chair. And more, he was offering (for the paltry sum of five million pounds) to lease the country 'the finest Renaissance collection never seen', Eirl's father's art collection of dodgy—'read Nazi Loot'—provenance. Absolutely priceless according to the fine professor. Particularly the only known portrait of Giovanni Bellini by Albrecht Durer at which Ian was practically drooling to get a look. The question was rather a quarter of a million people a year would eagerly pay up 2 pounds each for the same opportunity. Eirl's lobby in Whitehall said yes; Morse thought it was less than likely. Regardless, Morse left the college much more satisfied than he had Strange's office.

And the next morning there was Lewis calling to say he'd found what he'd gone off to find. Jane Marriot. Harry Field's model. Not an unknown face from a magazine after all. One more person to mourn Harry's passing. Like Helen Field, Jane was a strong yet strangely vulnerable woman. More a girl really. A girl who'd posed for Tony Doyle (though he'd denied even knowing she'd existed) when she'd been only fifteen.

"Why lie about it?" Lewis had asked when Morse filled him in on what he'd learned from her.

Remembering her haunted expression and sad voice as she'd asked if he'd seen the paintings of her and said, "He made me look better than I am, didn't he? He did me a right favour there," Morse didn't want to think about it. He also didn't want to think about Strange's words from the day before, but they'd stuck with him all the same. In light of them, Morse made sure he commended Lewis not once but twice on a job well done finding Harry's model. Which only made Lewis ask him if he was feeling all right.

Morse went off then to collect from his friend Ian an eighty p postcard of the Cezanne Eirl's grandfather had had commissioned of the house near Cahors. And there, wooing the College with promises of a chair that might or might not ever come through was Eirl himself. The two of them had locked eyes from a distance. Morse hadn't gone there to keep an eye on the man, but he was quite content to let the impression that he had stand. It wouldn't hurt for Eirl to stew if he was guilty; and if he wasn't, why was he challenging Morse with his look? Morse held Eirl's eyes and refused to be the one to turn away first. The college might bow to Eirl, and Whitehall as well, but Morse never. The Eirl millions and name notwithstanding. (Back in Jane's falling-down flat, Morse had asked her if she'd ever heard of Eirl. She hadn't paused a hair's breadth before asking 'who?' Though there was no reason to think Eirl would aspire to be known by the likes of Jane Marriot, it did Morse's heart good to know the man wasn't the end-all he seemed to think he was.)

In the end, the short, bald-headed man reminding Morse somehow of his favourite mystery writer who was standing next to Eirl nudged the Frenchman, and he turned back to the small group of college bigwigs surrounding him. Morse was freed to go find his sergeant and hear about his afternoon's work. Lewis was once again waiting for him. As though he had nothing better to do than sit about Oxford studying PACE. Not that Morse was to know that was what Lewis was doing. It was almost comical, really, how Lewis tried to slip the booklet into his pocket without drawing Morse's attention.

He needn't have bothered. Morse had decided if they were ever to solve the question of who killed Harry Field he'd have to put all that as far out of his mind as possible. He couldn't think with it looming over him. So he turned a blind eye to Lewis' fumbling. Lewis had spent his time (when he didn't have his nose in PACE) playing table tennis with Harry's father and finding out he had not heard of Paul Eirl and that neither Harry Senior or Junior were fans of Tony Doyle despite Doyle's frequent loans Harry's way. It all led the excitable sergeant to suspect blackmail…Harry's of Tony Doyle. As, according to the elder Field, Harry had known about Doyle's taste in teenage girls.

Morse was quick to shoot Lewis' theory down. "Blackmail wasn't Harry's style. Anyway, what sort of money are we talking about? Twenty here, fifty there—"

"So, how did Harry afford his Grand Cru wines?" Lewis pressed. Morse suspected Lewis had gotten another bee in his bonnet and would be off chasing the blackmail angle at every opportunity if Morse wasn't careful.

"People like Harry just do, Lewis. Not everyone has a jar for the gas, a jar for the rent..."

Lewis ignored the crack and didn't drop the subject, "Do you know Doyle's wife is very wealthy? That's how he can afford an Aston Martin on a schoolteacher's salary. And the car heard outside of Harry's studio in the early hours of the morning sounded like a specialist engine." Lewis paused to consult his notebook and then confirmed, "A powerful engine. Possibly Paul Eirl's Ferrari. But then Paul Eirl wasn't having an affair with Harry's wife."

Morse appreciated Lewis' ability to organize an investigation and keep to the known facts. No flights of fancy for his sergeant. Which wasn't to say Lewis lacked imagination…just that he didn't often let it carry him too far from the notes and facts he'd collected about a case. Which was perhaps why the blanks in his detective's notebook worried him so…who was Harry's model? Why would Tony Doyle keep handing money over to Harry Field when Harry had no use for him? Where did Harry get his money? Morse knew his own strengths lay elsewhere. Leave it to Lewis to plod along filling in the blanks in his notebook; Morse was more interested in the puzzles of the case. How did a dead man call home? What did Paul Eugene Eirl and Harry Field have in common? He did admire Lewis' presentation of his facts, but they weren't leading him any closer to an answer as to who killed Harry Field.

"Doyle isn't a killer," Morse pronounced with certainly. And if he sounded dismissive…well, facts were all well and good, but if you already _knew _where they didn't lead there was no need to waste time dwelling on them. They'd stood together looking across that field to Paul Eirl's house and how Lewis could believe for a moment that Harry's motorcycle being found only a two minute walk away had nothing to do with his murder Morse didn't know. That connection—that was where the answer lay regardless of where Lewis' nicely arranged facts pointed.

(Conveniently, Morse turned a blind eye to the fact that there had been two 'coincidences' that were just too good to be true when he and Lewis had stood overlooking the Eirl estate…and one of them, the fact Eirl and Harry had both used CT Motors had indeed proven to be just a coincidence. Lewis with his trusty notebook and his attention to details was not so easily able to forget what he didn't want to see.)

Morse left Lewis to his facts and totally off-base blackmail notion while he tested his own theory about message machines, tape recorders, and the call Mrs. Field had received from her husband four days after he was already dead.


	7. Chapter 7

That night a hut on the Eirl estate went up in flames. If Morse had had any doubts about Eirl's involvement in the murder they would have gone up with it. The murder, the acid-splattered painting, the motorcycle three hundred yards from the estate…a man's message recorded to his wife and sent as an alibi for his own murder, the burned out hut—somehow all the puzzle pieces fit together but staring down across the field once more at the old mansion, Morse couldn't say _how_. He only knew _who_.

Lewis arrived to report, "I've looked into Harry Field's back account. He wasn't broke. An eighteen thousand pound cash deposit in June this year. Unfortunately, no corresponding withdrawal from Tony Doyle's account."

"I said Harry wasn't a blackmailer."

"Bit of a dark horse about his finances though," Lewis commented.

Morse had no more idea than Lewis why a man who was always sailing close to the wind should turn up dead with that sort of the money in the bank, but he thought he had a good idea who'd supplied the cash. "I wonder if Paul Eirl was in England during June," he mused.

Lewis helpfully supplied him the answer he'd learned chatting with the ex-copper turned security man at the gate, "He comes over the week before Wimbledon. But why would Eirl give Harry eighteen thousand quid for?"

"Certainly not for a painting of the house. Cezanne didn't earn that much, and he was good at landscapes," Morse quipped, but his mirth was short-lived. "It would have taken Harry two minutes, drunk or sober, to get from the pub to the house…a surprise visit? It's possible, Lewis, possible."

"But what was Harry doing here?" Lewis, always inquisitive, always looking for the reason behind the facts, asked. His questioning nature was what had initially drawn Morse to him, and no matter that Lewis occasionally seemed like a three year-old with a limitless supply of whys, Morse still greatly valued it in him. Wit and imagination…the two things that made a detective. Lewis frequently wasn't the sharpest knife in the box in Morse's estimation, but as long as Lewis kept asking his questions and seeking his answers, Morse had believed he'd one day see Lewis turn into a better than average detective. Now though...all that would be wasted in Traffic. For Morse had no doubt that Lewis would pass the examination; Lewis might not be the cleverest man in the Thames Valley CID, but he was far from dull. If he wasn't, Morse would never have spent the time nurturing him. Impossible to call back all the hours he'd invested in the sergeant, all the cases they'd worked together. The time and effort and care were spent…for all the good they'd do in Traffic.

"And why," Morse added, refusing to think about it, "should a hut in a remote part of the estate suddenly burst into flames? I suspect that's where they hid Harry's body for a week. And that's why he was dry when we found him." Morse felt the pieces slipping into place. It was time to interview Paul Eirl and his staff, formally and with a search warrant.

When morning arrived with the proper paperwork, it unfortunately found Morse interviewing Eirl's staff not about the murder of Harry Field but that of Paul Eugene Eirl. Someone in the night had dumped the puzzle box and scattered the pieces all over again. His mind still on Harry, Morse wasn't even sure where to start on the Eirl murder. Though, of course, they were connected. No one could doubt that. So…along with gathering what information he could about the whys and wherefores of Eirl's death, Morse made sure he received confirmation from the receptionist that Eirl had indeed been in the country in June. And along with a very nice, state-of-the-art cassette deck, there were phone extensions a plenty in the house to make taping Harry's call child's play.

As he'd spoken with Eirl's receptionist, he'd stalked about the great room and there on the wall was the same painting pictured on his eighty p postcard. Or extraordinarily close. A copy. A copy of the Cezanne. Of course. And he hadn't known. If the woman wouldn't have told him, he would have gone right on thinking he was standing there looking at the real thing. Still Harry hadn't had it in him to be a forger…and there were more interviews yet to be conducted.

The chauffeur, Carl, attempted to opt out with a shrug and a stumbled, "My English...I cannot..."

Morse was not in the mood. "Du wirst mir antworten. Es kommt auf dich an," he told the German in his own tongue. _Oh, you will answer me. It's up to you how_.* Carl swallowed hard and closed his mouth and that was one interview Morse would be happy to conduct at the station.

Lewis was there anyway with Forensic's preliminary findings that Eirl's spinal cord had been severed, probably by some sort of a spike.

Morse glanced up to see Chief Superintendent Strange coming through the door. He patted Lewis on the shoulder and said in a voice sure to reach Strange, "Right. Good, Lewis. Very good." If Lewis wouldn't have looked about in puzzled surprise Morse's act would have more believable. All Strange's fault. Accusing Morse of not doing right by Lewis when obviously Lewis himself had no complaints whatsoever in that regard.

"Morning, Sir," Morse greeted Strange.

"We've got a very important corpse on our hands," the chief superintendent said, explaining his appearance on the scene.

"Yes," Morse agreed. "I preferred him as a suspect." By the time Morse had reassured Strange he was capable of dealing with their very important corpse and sent the Chief Superintendent on his way, there'd been Eirl's lobbyist to get out of the way, and then finally the search of the garage.

They didn't need a detailed lab analysis to tell them one of the cars had been recently and very thoroughly disinfected. Their noses were more than up the task. This then would have been how Harry's body had been transported from the hut to the bridge.

Carl was no more willing to talk in the station than he had been at the house. With a London solicitor in route to use the Eirl money and influence to earn the chauffeur's release, Morse was fuming when he left the interview room.

"We won't get a word out of him…he has too much to lose!"

"Sir?" Lewis asked.

Fortunately, Strange was safely tucked in his office upstairs because Morse forgot all about watching the way he spoke to his sergeant. "Well, how many people do you think it took to throw a body over that bridge?" he yelled before throwing up his hands and leaving Lewis to wait for the London solicitor while he went back to the Eirl mansion.

Later, Lewis found him there pacing about under the majestic old trees. Lewis brought with him the Vodaphone bill showing that there'd been only the one call made from Eirl's car to his own house on the pertinent date…well, Morse wasn't surprised. He'd gotten there already. For some reason or another Harry had arrived on the estate—probably by way of the field; he'd been seen by Eirl and quite probably the silent German Carl; there'd been a fracas over something and then? Eirl had placated Harry, there'd been small talk in the back of the car, Harry had been encouraged to call home, tell his wife he'd be home the next day…only the call hadn't gone to his wife but to the house. Four days later the message had finally reached Helen Field, but by then Harry had been long dead…

"We'll never prove that, Sir," Lewis said after listening to Morse's theory.

Morse had to agree. "Not unless Harry speaks to us from beyond the grave." As that was extremely unlikely, it left them to get on with the job. There was still evidence to gather and answers to be found.

The lovely widow was more than three sheets to the wind when Morse arrived in hopes she'd have some of those missing answers. Even so, she was still insisting she didn't usually drink at that time of day. Her grief had turned into a bitterness which spewed out of her in every direction. Not unlike the acid she finally admitted throwing over the painting in Harry's studio. For Harry had seen her laughing with Tony and realized about their affair (_packed in quite some time ago she claimed, though Tony Doyle would have something else to say about that when questioned later by Lewis)_; he'd put his fist through a painting that had meant a great deal to her and she'd thought to return the favour. She'd asked Tony to do the deed for her, but once he'd driven out to the studio he'd had second thoughts (_my Lancelot) _and left it for her to go out and throw the acid. Nothing she said surprised Morse. So much of the puzzle of the events surrounding Harry's death had fitted together that the picture was missing only a very few details. Only the one really: what had taken Harry to the Eirl estate?

"I always thought Harry and I would have time to agree to terms for peace before our old age," Mrs. Field said sadly in the course of the interview. It's always later than you think, isn't it?" As far as answering who had killed Harry Field, Morse thought it wasn't. He'd known for quite some time that was down to Paul Eugene Eirl. It was a matter of finding out why Harry had had to die. And then, of course, there was also the little matter of who had then killed Eirl. Two different murders, two different murderers (had to be seeing the perpetrator of the first was the victim of the second) yet still very much connected. Somehow. In some way besides violent death.

Paintings. Had to be…but how? When the case had finally drawn to a close, that the connection between Harry Field and Paul Eirl had been paintings was certain. The why Harry had had to die was much less than. There'd been two compelling reasons why Harry might have gone to the Eirl estate to meet his death—each slipping easily enough into the last remaining hole in the puzzle without the other. But together? That was one picture which never would become any clearer.

Harry Field, Sr., believed he knew the answer. Believed it with such certainty that Eirl was no longer alive to tell the tale. Jane Marriot believed she knew the answer as well though she'd never have acted on it or even spoken of it if Harry's dad wouldn't have put that spike through Eirl's back. (_My word against a rich bloke…who would have believed me?") _The one an old tale of conspiracy to commit forgery being brought to the light of day because Harry Field who'd never quite managed to make anything of his life finally found a cause worthy of death; unable to stay quiet while Eirl duped the country with his father's manufactured Durer, he'd died to keep him from telling the truth.

"Eirl did it. I know he did. The evidence is all…he _must_ have done it," Harry's dad had insisted.

"And Durer must have painted Bellini," Morse said quietly quoting the man's own words as to why his forgery had been accepted as an original. It was logical and the timing had been perfect. The elder Field's explanation of Harry's murder was certainly reasonable—Morse had it written up very much the same the moment he'd seen the copy of the Cezanne hanging in Harry's father's house on the same wall as the painting of Harry's mother and a young boy growing up to be murdered—and the timing fit perfectly with the murder. Five million pounds to be made leasing the collection to the country and suddenly one of the very few men who knew of the forgery was dead. Yes, the timing and the story certainly fit. And if Morse hadn't returned to wander around Harry's studio one last time in a sad sort of good bye to a man he had never known he'd never have questioned its veracity.

But he had, and that's when he learned Jane Marriot's tale of a rich man who thought he could have whatever he fancied, the model's anger and hopelessness of finding herself the thing he fancied, and the angry 'you'd make a good pimp!' accusation she'd thrown in Harry's face the night he disappeared. And if anyone could say whether it was to salvage a bit of honour for his father or for himself that Harry had ridden off on his Vincent Black Shadow motorbike to confront Paul Eirl, it wasn't Morse. That final piece would never slip easily into place; the picture would never be clearer. A most frustrating conclusion though Paul Eirl had doubtlessly been the one who killed Harry Field.

*Apologies to those who understand German…this is as close as Google was able to get me.


	8. Epilogue

"Beware, all thieves and imitators of other people's labour and talents, of laying your audacious hands upon our work," Morse quoted as he and Lewis stopped by the pub for the last drink they'd have on this particular case. Perhaps, with Lewis' departure looming, the last they'd have on any case.

"Who said that, Sir?" Lewis asked on cue.

"Albrecht Durer. In 1511."

"Ah…how does it feel to have been right all the time?" Lewis asked. And regardless of the why of the case, Morse had been right. Eirl had been their murderer.

"Frustrating. I'll never prove conclusively that Eirl did it."

"We've got time on our side. Something might turn up." That was Lewis as well. Ever the optimist to Morse's pessimist. Something else Morse had always counted on. His sergeant always showing the counterpoint when Morse's days grew too dark. That, too, he'd lose when he lost Lewis.

Morse said, "I'm told it's always later than you think…'the road goes on and on and others follow it who can'."

"About me," Lewis said, "going on and on, Sir..." The words hit Morse like a well-aimed blow. He'd spent the case avoiding facing that particular eventuality, but he'd known, ultimately, he'd have to face it. That didn't make it any easier.

"To Traffic?" he said, disparagingly because otherwise he'd not have been able to say anything at all.

"Exactly," Lewis said, and Morse knew his sergeant well enough to hear in his voice that Lewis had at last faced the fact that he was a detective not a traffic cop. "I've been having a bit of a rethink. The missus reckons I'd be miserable. And I'm not sure a hat would suit me just at the moment...maybe I'll give meself another year."

Morse slowed and fell in step behind Lewis so his sergeant wouldn't look over and see the raw emotions washing through him. He felt much as a man given an eleventh-hour reprieve must feel. He hung back a moment letting Lewis go on before him.

The end...

Author's Note: To write the thoughts of a truly clever man, one must be at least somewhat clever. Unfortunately, not being all that clever, that didn't occur to me until I'd invested way too much time and hit upon one too many lines I liked too much to trash, so I just soldiered on regardless of the fact that I couldn't work in even one reference to Wagner or other incomprehensible musical works and couldn't throw in any obscure quotes from even more obscure classics. And it didn't help any that while I'd remembered the wonderful Lewis scene, I'd totally forgotten that I never had really gotten the case's solution which made writing the ending more than problematic…were we to believe Harry's dad or Jane? Was Morse's "And Durer must have painted Bellini," meant to be as damning as it might have been or was it just a really, really great line? I'm fairly sure that a clever sort would see the entire forgery angle as a type of deception of its own—making us focus our attention on the painting when we should have been like Lewis and looked at the model. But maybe not…it's all a bit beyond me, as I'm afraid the writing of this story has been as well.


End file.
